


Session I: May 28, 2015

by this-caring-lark (firstimecaller)



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Mountain Goats (Band)
Genre: Ficlet, Inspired by Music, M/M, Songfic, Writing Exercise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 08:12:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4172448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstimecaller/pseuds/this-caring-lark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being ficlets written off prompts culled from tMG lyrics (with 340+ tMG songs on shuffle play and no skips allowed), with extremely light editing. I chose the lyrics that would be the prompt, but not the song. Once the song was over, the writing moved on to the next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Session I: May 28, 2015

**Author's Note:**

> Thing learned: Damn I am literal.
> 
> This was intended to loosen the writer's block that has stalled out both Gray's Cipher and The Lambda Plan. It didn't really work for that purpose, but the result was fun if not earthshaking.
> 
> Song titles and albums in the end notes.

1.

_Waiting for the front door to splinter, waiting all winter._

For the first several weeks, he slept with the gun under his pillow. Sherlock was in hospital, a plain clothes heavy assigned by Mycroft had haunted the ward since the Magnusson incursion. But John wasn’t worried about Magnusson.

2. 

_Try to think of ways to fix myself, but everything ends in a cul-de-sac_   
_The beast broke from the barn while we were sleeping_   
_Face it face it, he’s not coming back_

He was gone. Truly gone. The vicar pronounced them, like a coroner on the scene.

3.

_You can’t tell me what my spirit tells me isn’t true_  
 _can you_  

He’d said, “It won’t change anything, you know. Mary and me.” But it wasn’t true and they both knew it. Sherlock _prima facie_ , John deep down.

4.

_It was hard to even see you at all_  
 _because the air was thick with alcohol_  
 _so I kept on rubbing on my eyes_  
 _for all the good it did me_  
 _for all the measurable good it did me_  

Was there anything more beautiful, more transcendent, than an intoxicated John Watson?  Yes. A John Watson viewed through alcohol-softened eyes.

5.

_Sink my teeth into your scalp_   
_take a nice big bite_   
_save nothing for the cameras_   
_play the angles all night_   
_one of these days my legs will both snap like twigs_   
_If you can’t beat ‘em_   
_make ‘em bleed like pigs_

Jim glared, but there was fondness in his look. His last perfect set piece, and it was so delicious he almost regretted that he would miss the dénouement. What would Sherlock’s head look like, egg-crushed and melon-splattered on the pavement? Would he land on his nose or would he somehow protect that perfect face long enough for his precious John to see the final masterpiece? No matter. It was time.

6.

_I know you’re only watching out for yourself_   
_and I know I’m not to take it_   
_real personal-like_   
_and I know you only want what’s best for everybody_   
_I know you only want what’s best for everybody_

Mrs. Hudson watched him leave, his coat billowing like the cape of a super hero. She had seen his last loaded look at the happy couple, remembered a similar look on her maid of honour’s face, so many years ago. But there was something else in his look, something she thought she could account for, and it broke her heart.

7. 

_You heard of Bluebeard’s wife_   
_opening every cupboard trying to find a smoking gun_   
_I told you, I told you_   
_Told you not to open that one_

It was…it was one deduction too many.

8. 

_And I dreamt of a house_   
_haunted by all you tweakers with your hands out_

In truth it had only been five hours between John’s vows and Sherlock’s first high in almost five years. It took a month for John to catch up with him, and for Sherlock to put it to use in gaining Magnusson’s attention. But it had taken no time to go from the truly lowest low to the falsely highest high.

9. 

_I am wearing a white long sleeve button down_

God but he was gorgeous in something as simple as a black suit and a white shirt.

10. 

_The girls don’t seem to care what’s on_   
_as long as it plays ‘til dawn_

This was music? The club DJ mashed two terrible songs into a new singularly awful one, and the crowd went wild. At least John seemed to be enjoying himself.

11. 

_And I can hear you up there_   
_isn’t it romantic_   
_you’re huffing and puffing, rearranging_   
_deck chairs on the Titanic_

He could hear Mary in the kitchen, making their first meal since the reconciliation at Holmes cottage. Could hear her going through the motions of domesticity, as if they were something true. He could never hear her again, doing anything, without imagining a gun in her hand and lies in her eyes. It was broken irrevocably, and he knew it, and now all he could do was wait. 

12. 

_In an hour or two_   
_the sun will rise on you_   
_and it will be clear what has happened between us_

He woke slowly at first, then all at once as the morning fog in his head cleared, listening to the sounds of John’s breathing, as steady and still as the man himself. He hardly dare take his own breath for fear of making the whole scene vanish like an erased mistake.

13. 

_A daylily withers_   
_the heat kills off all the grain_   
_and just when you think_   
_it’s never gonna rain_   
_the rain comes_   
_the rain comes_   
_it floods the town_   
_kills everybody in it_

God but he loved a locked room murder. And a multiple! Five people drowned in a house that was bolted and secure at all entrances.

14. 

_Headed for the islands_

 A sex holiday. Disgusting.

15. 

_The endless string of summer storms_   
_that led me to today_   
_Began one afternoon with you_   
_long ago and far away_   
_And someone leads the beast in on his chain_   
_And I know you’re thinking of me_   
_‘cause it’s just about to rain_

He knows Ella is waiting for an answer. He knows it like he knows the rain on the window is wet and driving. But he can’t give her an answer. Can’t say it.

16. 

_I know you’ve come to take my toys away_

 The moment he saw her, gliding toward the table and sitting down like she belonged there, he knew. Nothing was going to go right after this. Nothing that had come before mattered one jot.

17. 

_And I was like a patient on a table_   
_headed for the light_

Even among the scramble of bodies isolating him, shielding him from the sniper’s view, he could hear John’s distinct gait slurring its way to his side. “Let me through,” he said. “He’s my friend.”

18. 

_I try and tell you secrets ‘til my face turns blue_   
_I am not getting through to you_

Billy was usually the perfect interlocutor, but not today. Today he needed something more than understanding silence. He needed…god, it was pathetic… _advice_. What was a best man supposed to say if he couldn’t say, “I’m in love with the groom”?

19. 

_Will I see you there_   
_when that final trumpet blows_   
_will I see you there_   
_when that final trumpet blows?_   
_If I don’t see you there_   
_I will run a comb through my hair_   
_and I will wait_   
_I will wait_   
_I will wait_

Not for the first time, Sherlock thanked his inner gods for giving him the gift of lip-reading. “Please don’t be dead,” he’d said, “please don’t be dead.”

20. 

_And there’s a cold wind blowing_   
_and there’s a silver bell hanging_   
_and there’s a silver bell ringing_   
_And I, I am a monster_   
_I can’t believe the thing I’ve done_

What should he have done? Imprisoned Moriarty indefinitely, knowing he would never give up any of his vast store of intelligence on the innerworkings of Europe’s most insidious crime syndicates? It was just a few stories about Sherlock, facts anyone could deduce with enough effort and observation.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Songs Titles and Albums
> 
> 1\. “If You See Light,” Get Lonely  
> 2\. “Romans 10:9,” The Life of the World to Come  
> 3\. “White Cedar,” Transcendental Youth  
> 4\. “Alphabetizing,” Protein Source of the Future…Now!  
> 5\. “Foreign Object,” Beat the Champ  
> 6\. “Fresh Berries for You,” Protein Source of the Future…Now!  
> 7\. “Scotch Grove,” The Coroner’s Gambit  
> 8\. “Palmcorder Yajna,” We Shall All Be Healed  
> 9\. “Flashing Lights,” Sweden  
> 10\. “FM,” Sweden  
> 11\. “Sail Babylon Springs,” Babylon Springs EP  
> 12\. “Send Me an Angel,” Sweden  
> 13\. “Hardpan Song,” All Hail West Texas  
> 14\. “Snakeheads,” Palmcorder Yajna EP  
> 15\. “1 John 4:16,” The Life of the World to Come  
> 16\. “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away,” Nine Black Poppies  
> 17\. “Alibi,” Babylon Springs EP  
> 18\. “New Britain,” Full Force Galesburg  
> 19\. “Blues in Dallas,” All Hail West Texas  
> 20\. “Neon Orange Glimmer Song,” Sweden


End file.
